Dear Internet,
The Lisa Extended World Tour: 2014 Edition
1972 Toronto to Port Huron, MI
1985 Port Huron to Grand Rapids
1990 Grand Rapids to Toronto
1991 Toronto to Grand Rapids
1997 Grand Rapids to San Francisco
1999 San Francisco to DC
2003 DC to Grand Rapids
2009 Grand Rapids to Detroit
2011 Detroit to Grand Rapids
2014 Grand Rapids to East Coast
TheSoonToBeExHusband and I are in the throes of sorting, packing, tossing, and cleaning. If I could light everything on fire and be done, I certainly would. We accumulated a lot of shit for being in the house for only 3.5 years but the house still feels empty in some spaces; it is a strange juxtaposition but also a great metaphor of my life up until now.
The biggest concentration of Lisa-stuff is my office, which looks like a scene from Apocalypse Now. And being a librarian and all, my organizational skills are brilliant. So brilliant, the eye is fooled with how much is in here.
(There is a lot here.)
Divorcing, job hunting, apartment hunting, and moving at the same time started to take its toll. My plans were so fluid, they literally changed from one hour to the next because something was always coming up and things had to get readjusted. I had no concrete idea when I was leaving Grand Rapids but that I only wanted to be out before the snow falls. My partner in crime on the east coast and I sorted out what would be feasible when and agreed that the concentration is on the divorcing and moving. They’ve secured long-term, albeit temporary, lodgings for me which takes a lot of weight off my shoulders (as well alleviates money worries and long list of couch surfing).
The firm plans are as follows: I fly out on the 23rd and set up east coast things (storage, mail, etc). I come back on September 30th. Movers come October 13-16 and load up the truck. I leave on the 17th and start the drive east.
Once I’m settled east coast side, I wait for the chaos to subside and get cracking on the big projects like writing and researching opening up my lady-owned comic book store.
And just being deliriously full of joy every single day.
[iframe src=”https://8tracks.com/mixes/4805286/player_v3_universal” width=”300″ height=”250″ style=”border: 0px none;”]
Track listing:
Intro – The xx
Miles Iz Ded – The Afghan Whigs
Natural One – Folk Implosion
Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors – Editors
He Can Only Hold Her – Amy Winehouse
Moving to L.A. – Art Brut
There Is No Other Way – Blur
Brother Misery – The Mercuries
xoxo,
Lisa
Tag: TheExHusband
she who gives
Dear Internet,
We’re rattling around the fancy house like ghosts with Restoration Hardware chains around our waists. We would give Miss Havisham a run for her money with our shenanigans.
On Monday, TheSoonToBeExHusband saw a nurse practitioner who put him on Wellbutrin, which seems to be working. He has an appointment in a few weeks to talk with his own shrink and to start making headway on working on the problems he needs to address. He has finally agreed that we need to be apart while he works on his problems and I work on mine; that the two of us together only hinder the other in our mutual goals of mental happiness. I am making no promises to him, which is why I don’t want to be only separated, I want to be divorced.
Because this is the core truth: Love often isn’t enough. It hurts. It breaks. It shatters, but it is truth.
I’m tired. A Lot.
My sleeping patterns have been fucked for a while because of the unmedicated mania, but now it’s worse. Thursday I napped for a few hours and dreamt I was walking around with lockjaw. No one in my dreams could understand what I was saying, which of course frustrated me even more. My mouth was aching when I woke up; thankfully none of my teeth were broken from the gnashing in my sleep.
On Friday, I posed the following to my Facebook wall,
PSA: Why you should masturbate on a regular basis:
If I had not attempted to masturbate this morning, I would not have found the lump in the left interior wall of my vagina, which turned out to be a filled Bartholin gland. If I had not taken myself to the ER this morning and gotten it checked, the gland could have gotten infected, which would have meant they would have gone in, drain the gland, and there was a mention of 4-6 week catheter and other fun stuff.
Instead, I take drugs, wear a maxi pad, and place a heating pad on my crotch to hope it drains by itself.
Masturbate! And often!
I have to spend a few hours a day with a heating pad on my crotch and take long baths. Good thing I like long baths.
So on top of it all, my vagina is now broken. I used to joke to the TheSoonToBeExHusband if he didn’t fuck me enough, I would get clogged.
And well, here we are.
Or it could be from my chronic masturbation the last few weeks of dreams and fantasies that I can now indulge in that I could not indulge before because it didn’t fit the parameters of my now dead marriage. Am I revealing too much? No, I think that was the problem to begin with: I was not revealing enough.
I have nothing left to lose here, in this world, and I don’t think many of you will understand the freedom that comes from this weight being lifted from my heart and soul. Things are clicking into place that were put on hold for a very long time, and as I reveal those plans slowly, some of you have expressed concern. I get it. I do. It all sounds stupidly overwhelming and incomprehensible. How do I know I’m not in mania right now?
Easy. Mania is about impulse. This is not impulse, this is about righting myself on the path I needed to be on so many years ago. If I was manic, I would be indulging in reckless behaviors and I’m not. It’s just that simple.
I am lucid, clear, and in control of myself.
What I hadn’t expected as the result of the fallout of my marriage? Things like this:
The creeper is a high school boyfriend who dumped me when I wouldn’t put out. I was 15 and still a virgin. He was also fairly instrumental in helping promote my reputation as the high school whore when the swim team attempted to gang rape me at a sleep-away event for our science classes. I escaped by climbing out of the bathroom window when my two female cabin mates couldn’t smash down the cabin door. Of course we never told the adult chaperones on that trip, because hey, I was the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Who’d believe me?
I found it intriguing he wanted to be FB BFFs a few years ago. Even more interesting was he never said a word to me until I did a beta readers request a few weeks ago about my new adventures in writing erotica. And then I became his unwilling mother confessor.
As I’ve been working on reclaiming my sensuality for the last couple of months, and have been more public about it. With the collapse of my marriage, he and numerous others have been circling like vultures because apparently being public about my masturbation habits and enjoying sex is an open invitation.
You know, because being blunt about sex means I’m just begging for it.
I started out this piece in a calm but sad space and became so fucking angry that I’m shaking. I have a lot of great support on both coasts, and instead of working with them to keep me in this nice sane place, I have to spend my extraneous energy fighting off sexual predators. Thanks. Much appreciated.
Thursday I’m flying out to the East coast for a much needed mini-break. I want to be somewhere where I won’t get yelled at. Or sued. Or harassed. I’ve got the best possible host lined up who is going to take very good care of me and I plan on being underground for a few days. There are those who know where I will be in case of emergencies but the rest of you? Bye. See you next Sunday afternoon.
xoxo,
Lisa
This Day In Lisa Universe: 1999
into which the cosmos will collapse once again
Dear Internet,
In January, I found out I was soon going to be out of a job.
In February, I lost my beloved Wednesday.
In June, it was revealed I am co-defendant in a $1.25M defamation case.
In August, I separated from my husband.
The last 72 hours have been a corporeal version of bipolar. The cycling in this house, between the two of us, is so fast and furious, the sheer amount of willpower to keep myself together has been exhausting.
Yet, this is the most lucid and clear I’ve felt in years.
The tl;dr is I will never see his joyful face in my Instagram feed. There is not a single picture, with perhaps the exception of our wedding photo four years ago, where he looks like he wants to be there.
The condensed version is I’ve struggling with leaving him for the last two years. Shortly after my 40th birthday, I had the arthritis ankle surgery. Several months later, I knew I was in such a bad place, I sought out help. I wanted to be sure that whatever feelings I had were because of the crazy, not because I was unhappy in the relationship. On paper, my relationship looked flawless.
During all of this, I would voice my concerns to him, tell him what was going on in my head. We would have these big sit down talks about the status of the relationship. I would continue to work on making me whole, he would do his bit.
But he never really did.
And since I am the Guinness world holder for navel gazing, I documented all of it here, so I know, I KNOW, I fought for my marriage and for him. But after two years, and not seeing myself or ourselves go forward, I knew I had to make a choice: Me or my marriage.
I choose me.
He’s angry right now and he’s lashing out at me, and I take it because I am not arguing, debating, or correcting his impressions. I’m a terrible person because he stuck through with the surgery and the crazy, why can’t I wait for him? He vilifies me in one breath and tells me I’m the love of his life in the other.
I’m selfish because I am not keeping to my vows. The same vows he ridiculed for years because as we all know, he only married me to give me health insurance.
There is more to this, ALWAYS more to this, but this is all that you need to know. For now. When the time comes, and it will, to examine with microscopic intensity the demise of my relationship, I will commit it all here.
As for me? Well. I have nothing left to lose anymore. I have lost everything. So, once the home is sold and the divorce is settled, I’m leaving Michigan. Hopefully for good this time. I always come back to lick my wounds here, but there is nothing left is this state for me anymore and hasn’t been for a very long time. Of those I’m leaving behind that I care about, I am sorry, but I cannot be here anymore.
I’m heading to the east coast, going to couch hop for a bit, and then find a place to settle. Get myself a sunny apartment, and with my teddy bear in one hand and a pug leash in the other, start over.
xoxo,
Lisa
gilded tongues and pretty words
Dear Internet,
It’s been a hellauva week.
There are two things I cannot discuss just yet, but many of you are aware of at least one of them. So let us trip up instead on good news instead of navel gazing on the bad.
Earlier this week, I posted on various social spheres that a present arrived on my doorstep, courtesy of TheBassist:
And when I mentioned in the posting the book took 8 years to get to me, questions were raised about why and how. It’s simple: TheBassist and I dated. We broke up. He had gotten the book signed for me at some point. The book had been lost, and then refound. So against his promise to never get in touch with me again, he did reach out because a promise made to me superseded a promise made to himself.
(Yes, the same person I mentioned almost a year ago about finding his coded messages to me on various Internet places and he clarified as to why he did it. The promise he made to himself to never get in touch was because he knew he had hurt me so badly, he didn’t think anything he could ever say would ever help ease the hurt of what he did.)
Complicated? Absolutely. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
After our stilted feeling out dance around each other, we became Facebook friends, laid down some boundaries, and started to get reaquainted with the other. In a very strange way, it is not like eight years has passed between us as conversation picked as if we had only spoken last week. You have to understand when we were dating, we used to text, talk, and email the other all day long. Literally, from the time we woke up to the time we went to bed.
(TheHusband and I have a similar relationship, which is one of the reasons why I married him.)
Really, what is kind of awesome about this new forged friendship between TheBassist and I is that he’s given me carte blanche on getting the answers about what happened between us, what has happened to him, and what is going to happen to his future. It’s intoxicating and overwhelming at the same time.
It is a heady power, one I will not use for ill will either.
(Plus he states on the reasoning on why we broke up, he says in honesty yet it will come out sounding cliched, it really was him and not me.)
Last year, I said
- He splintered my heart the first time that when he came sniffing around the second time, about six months after our first tussle, I showed him my partially fixed heart which he took a sledgehammer to. Again.
- While the connection between us when we were together was insane, he routinely lied to me on just about everything
- I could never trust him again, even in a platonic manner
1 is absolutely true. 2, he clarified and filled in the missing details, which were easily verifiable. So a lot of his actions are much clearer now on what happened and why, so it was not so much as lying as things were withheld. 3, perhaps is not wholly true because unlike some people from my past, I don’t feel like he’s creeping on me for the sake of creeping nor do I feel he has ulterior motives. (We’re both happily partnered up and I don’t think I would ever leave TheHusband for even Alexander Skarsgard. Maybeee James McAvoy.)
In my long storied history, TheBassist is one of my top five exes. And I’m really thrilled we were able to get closure on a lot of things that happened in the past, which apparently has freed up some unintentional emotional baggage because TheHusband said I’ve been really happy these last few days. (But I think the happiness has more to do we had really good shawarma for dinner, which precluded to me making happy noises while we ate.)
(When I broke this all down for my therapist last week, Dr. P. said this was not going to end well. When I asked why, Dr. P. seemed to be of the mindset that men and women can’t be friends once they have a romantic relationship because doing so brings up all the old feelings which can only lead to no good. I vehemently disagree with this because I am still in contact with many of my exes, the bad and the good, and some I’m quite close to. Just because we’ve seen each other naked and inserted things into orifices does not eradicate the bond we shared long after the romance was over.)
Time to switch gears and talk about a project I’ve been working on for the last few days as part of my writing schedule for July which is the get Vol 1 of secret Kindle project completed and online. The purpose of this project was to test out the ease and flexibility of selling stories via Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform. I don’t wholly expect to make millions off this, but it’s nice to figure out a new tech and make it work for me.
This project is turning out to be much bigger than I planned. I was originally anticipating that about a years worth of content would roughly translate into 200 pages after being formatted for the Kindle, but I’m four months in and already at 50 pages with the formating. So this may turn out to be one big, glorious mess. Hooray!
As part of the project also coincides with getting more of my old content on the websites, I’ve spent the last two days curating, uploading, mildly editing, and publishing stuff from the mid-late 90s and up to mid-00s. All of the existing prose pieces that used to reside here at EPbaB were moved over to my author site. About 50% of what’s on that page is “new.”
If you follow the weekly round up I do every Saturday, I typically list out these “new” entries that I put up for that week, but I often don’t give them summaries. I was pretty pleased with few of the pieces I found today, and was passing them around various social spheres, so here they are:
- sassy skirt seeks alliterative ally
This is my personal ad I put on match.com circa 2006. I’m pretty sure if I were single today and looking for fresh meat, I’d use this same ad with some minor edits. - rock*star
I wrote this piece in my undergrad for a creative writing class and I’m pretty proud of it. I blend together The Afghan Whigs lyrics, the time before a concert begins, and finding my high school love after nearly a decade. - popular suicide
I wrote this in 2004, documenting my 1989 suicide attempt and the advice my mother gave me after it happened. - Tripping on Stars
This was a lit ‘zine project some of my friend and I did in the summer of 1999 that lasted for an entire month! The few pieces I created for the project are not half bad.
Word to the wise: If you do decide to go down the Lisa of yore, be prepared for lots of angst, self-loathing, frank discussions about sex, and more.
xoxo,
Lisa
Drunk Cabin Time
Dear Internet,
I decided to get drunk last night – because that is what writers do! They get drink and let it all fucking go and in that aspect of my career, I am sadly far, far behind.
TheHusband and I have a pretty well stocked bar at Throbbing Manor and we never, ever partake. Like ever. There are loads of reason for this, ranging from alcoholism in our individual family histories to my bipolar. Neither of us have cultivated a taste for alcohol “just because” we like the taste, it was always about getting drunk; this attitude ruled much of our 20s.
But I’m 42 now. Adult. Need to step up the game. Get serious about letting go and learning how to handle my alcohol much more responsibly than I did back then. That’s why I made sure to bring up some delights from home for my writing retreat.
So it was entirely in the realms of the possible I start mixing myself white russians while waiting for the 42 year old stove take 1023984102938 minutes to boil some goddamn pasta for my dinner.
(TheDrunk informed me last night via Facebook I made the amateur mistake of carbing up before drinking. One should only do that if they are planning on a day long binge, like beer fests.)
During all of this, I decided I really needed to hear Aphex Twin. Which turned into me mixing a 33 song set, while regaling people on the Internets of g-d nearly every song, lyric, and dance moves coupled with stories behind songs I was choosing. I even started ranting about TheEx for a bit with the thought if I ever saw him again, six years on now, I’d rip his testicles off and shove them down his throat.
I’ve totally grown up and gotten over my anger — I didn’t use the word “balls.”
[iframe src=”https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:user:quangola:playlist:32vfc6WvlldQnJqxU6Ze1N” width=”300″ height=”380″ frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true”]
You will note Aphex Twin is not anywhere on the list.
I spent a lot of time “singing” and “dancing” around the cabin, with the blinds wide open on the and not giving two fucks. And I’m using quotes here because shit starts moving when in places you don’t expect when one dances. So I decided to tell the world that, and then this happened.
I sort of got clued in around 2AM that I was not the least bit tired, I was ready for yet another glass of my magic potion, and I could continue mixing my love song to the 90s tape for a few more hours.
So of course I was probably manic. Durr.
To wind the night down, I decided to make a Vine to prove the darkness of the night and in the background, you can hear the BZZZZZZZ of the cherry orchard equipment running at 2 goddamn in the AM. They are fertilizing and or picking cherries, according TheHusband.
(Sorry, the Vine autostarts!)
[iframe class=”vine-embed” src=”https://vine.co/v/MQ1udVrD3pT/embed/postcard” width=”600″ height=”600″ frameborder=”0″]
Hilarity: I had to google how to use Vine because I am old and forgetful.
There is something infinitely freeing about just letting it all the fuck go. Not getting sloppy drunk, or getting maudlin drunk (though that was close to happen there for a hot second, but I pulled out of it).
I woke up this morning with nary a trace of a hung over, while it was probably the carbs and the gallons of water I drunk before bed, I’m giving thanks to my Scottish ancestry for stepping up like woah, lassie.
Time for tea.
xoxo,
Lisa
3 More + 16 Years: The Chronicles Of A Girl Online
Dear Internet,
Pre-Tumblr (2007), pre-Twitter (2006), pre-Facebook (2004), pre-WordPress (2003), pre-Blogger (1999), pre-LiveJournal (1999), and even before the word “blog” (1999) became part of our everyday vocabulary, a twenty-something girl with lots of opinions and is an exhibitionist at heart started putting her life online in 1998 (1995).
In those days, we did not style ourselves as “bloggers” but as online journalists, diarists, or memoirists. We banded together on mailing lists like Diary-L and went to JournalCon. We often kept not only our own sites, but also companion sites at LiveJournal and DiaryLand.
Things were different then. Vastly different. You weren’t a brand, you were a person. Some wrote anonymously, some wrote brazenly, others wrote somewhere in between. You wrote to explain, connect, bend, fabricate, conceal, and open. You wrote because if you didn’t, you would explode.
We were fearless. We gave no fucks. We were the voice of a generation who came to the Internets guileless and unafraid, knowing whatever transgressions would ultimately be forgiven. We knew anything and everything was possible and we wrote about it all with no pretense. There was an intimacy and an immediacy to the writing. It was also comforting, knowing, shocking, and absorbing.
It was all life unrestricted.
We were all Samuel Pepys, but with laptops and modems, not quills and parchment.
Jarring shift: Last week I found out that whomever now owns simunye.org now has set robots.txt to NOFOLLOW.
And boom, just like that 10 years of Lisa on the ‘net has been wiped out for good.
This becomes important because simunye.org was the first domain I ever purchased, and the first home of The Lisa Chronicles. Once that robots.txt file was changed, tangible proof of my historical online record are forever gone. Now all that is left, other than the local copies safely tucked away in the cloud, is a mention of my early work in an article in Wired from February 1999.
(The incredibly short version of how I lost access in 2010 to the domain registrar where the domain was registered, the domain expired, and I didn’t grab it in time when it was free to renew. Despite this, I was still able to link to the simunye.org archives that lived on via Wayback Machine, but with the new domain owners setting robots.txt to NOFOLLOW, this also effectively wiped out the entire history of the domain at Wayback Machine.)
(And if that doesn’t get you thinking about the so-called permanency of what the Wayback Machine was meant to be as a social history archive of the Internet, then why does it even exist?)
(And it was perhaps fortuitous of me knowing this day was coming? I’ve been steadily putting up the old archives, which is why everything pre-2010 is in spurts. In 2008 I said it would be done by the end of the summer. So.)
But let us not mourn too much about the past, or what it has become. But let us look at this world I’ve inhibited for nearly two decades and how it is starting to come full circle. I was one of the few writing about their whole lives online then and I’m one of the few doing it now.
Now, everyone has an agenda. A brand. A business. A sale. They have a schtick and job, with goal settings, social media analytics, and use phrases like “bounce rate” and “conversions.” They write to make money and hope their kitschy blog on a niche thing will turn into a book or a movie deal.
However I find for all these sites that tell you how to do something, solve your problem, or make you laugh under the banner of “personal blog,” seem to lack a certain soul. A certain personality. Sure, many include tidbits and trinkets about their life in the piece, but the piece is not about that tidbit or trinket; it’s about selling you something and getting you to keep on buying what they are dealing for every time you click a link or land on a page, they are somehow making money.
So we swing back and here we are on the 16th anniversary of my online diary, my journal, my memoirs.
The anniversary of my online journal has always been fluid. Things were put up on GeoCities as far back as 1995, but apparently it was not until July 16, 1998 that I made an executive decision to do this regularly and The Lisa Chronicles (and subsidies) were born.
After a very prolific period that lasted well into the 2000s, I started to write less sometime in 2006, and then almost never and to the point I thought I would never come back. Various forms of the site evolved in bursts and in August 2010, after finishing library school and floundering around for a bit, I decided to resurrect the site in its previous glory. I also explained why I kept my world online:
When I started keeping an online journal in 1998, the main reason I started chronicling my entire life online was for me to remember it. I have no memory of my childhood and most of my tween years up until the age of 13 and there are even spots of time in my 20s that are vacant. If personal recollections, photographs, handwritten letters and other realia were so incredibly fragile, were my words digitally constructed that much stronger? Could I not access them at anytime and any point with no fear of deprecation?2 Wasn’t this the whole point of the internets?
I became obsessed with chronicling my life because I wanted my imprint to last forever. And this is why my online journal was called, The Lisa Chronicles.
The 2010 resurrection did not breathe life to the site as I had hoped and I started thinking maybe it was time for a new domain and a new name. I had been The Lisa Chronicles for so long but it didn’t feel quite right anymore. I needed a change.
On a trip to England in 2012, I was at Shakespeare’s Globe browsing the gift shop when I saw a pin that said, “Exit, Pursued by a Bear,” referencing the stage direction from The Winter’s Tale. Almost immediately I googled to see if the name was being used and it was in various forms that seemed to be mostly defunct but definitely not as a blog.
This is where I needed to be.
The tag line, “A Most Unreliable Narrator,” is a spin of the literary term “unreliable narration” which refers mainly to first person narratives, typically in fiction, as they are often biased and filled with self-interest. You know, like life.
In 1998, I was an unmedicated bipolar living in sin with TheHusband in near dump in Oakland, working for a sleazy ISP in San Francisco, and with a borderline drinking problem. I also smoked like a chimney and got into a lot of trouble. In 2014, I’m still unmedicated bipolar living no longer in sin with TheHusband in a too big for us house in a historic district in Grand Rapids, working freelance life as a writer who can barely have a drink a month, no longer smokes, and finds staying up late on Friday nights to be worrisome.
Who the fuck knows what this site, and me, are going to look like in another twenty years?
But personally, I can’t wait.
Fun Facts
- Someone once made me The Lisa Chronicles ICQ skin
- I produced t-shirts for supporting the site (and still have one)
- Most of my oldest, and dearest, friends were met either via IRC or my online journal
- I have been signing all of my entries, “xoxo, Lisa” since the very beginning
- TheHusband figures prominently in the beginning since we were together when I began the journal
- After nearly a decade of not being in touch, TheHusband tracked me down via my journal and we picked up right up in 2008 where we left off in 1999
- I’ve had romantic and platonic relationships end and begin because of my journal
- My preferred disposable pen is still a Pentel RSVP in fine point blue
- I still love nachos (but I no longer smoke)
- I finally finished college and went on to grab two masters after just to be safe
Stats
Total Words: Over 1 million
Total Posts: 2000 and growing (Average 125 posts a year for 16 years)
Content managed by: By hand until 2004ish, then Moveable Type, Blogger, WordPress, Joomla, Indexhibit, and back to WordPress.
Domains: simunye.org, trippingonstars.org, pronstar.org, bitchasshoe.org, modgirl.net, shesgotplans.net, biblyotheke.net, and finally, exitpursuedbyabear.net.
Here is how the site looked in 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2011.
Here is what I looked like in 1998, 2003, 2006, 2012, 2014
2001 About Page
I’m 6′ tall in stocking feet. I don’t know what my natural hair color is. I was born in Toronto, Ontario Canada; I have a half-brother, my father is dead, I’m eight years older than my fiancé. I have a shoe, handbag and clothes fetish. I style myself as a voracious reader and I have had up to 14 piercings at any given time. I dropped out of highschool – twice. I have yet to finish college. I’ve driven cross-country solo and I chain-smoke like a sailor. I love music, literature, walks on the beach and torturing ants with a magnifying glass.
2001 About page alternate
this isn’t going to be some sort of deep psychological debate with myself. you can form your own opinions about me via reading what i write. but that is just the tip. the basics are as follows:
- I’m 6′ tall in stocking feet.
- I’ve driven cross country (san fran to dc) solo
- I’ve been engaged multiple times (but not all at once)
- my fiance is eight years younger than me
- my brother is 7’2
- i was born in Canada and raised in Michigan
- i was arts/entertainment editor on the college paper
- i’m obsessed about harry potter and Anita Blake books
- the first thing i do when i get up is: feed the dogs, make coffee, pee, smoke a cigarette and check my stocks in that exact order
- i make more snide comments than i do straight answers
- i’m obsessive /compulsive
- i’m a drew carey fanatic.
- i admit to owning albums by “Aqua” “Color Me Badd” and “Britney Spears”
- i have a purse/shoe fetish
- i only write with Pentel’s rsvp pens in fine point blue
- i also tape (via tivo) beverly hills 90210 every time it’s on
- i’m a zelda fanatic
- my favorite comedian is eddie izzard
- if i would, i would marry christian slater in a heartbeat.
- same thing for brendan fraser
- ahh hell, imhotep from “the mummy” would so be my bitch
- i cannot live without my cellphone or my visor
- or cigarettes, cawfee (from Barnies) and nachos
2004 About Page
Don’t know. I’m an exhibitionist at heart? Whatever the reason, I’ve been keeping an online journal since 1996, a written one since I was a kid. Yah, I’m an old-timer. Fuck this blog shit!
I decided one day to keep an online account of my life and my feelings. I wanted to see how much I have changed (or not) through the years. It is also much cheaper to write than to see a shrink or take drugs. 😉 It’s become some sort of personal project for me and I hope to continue working on it. I write about anything and everything that strikes my fancy. I’ve had partners break up with me over the journal and others fall in love with me because of it. Chances are, if you know me, you’re in here somewhere. I do not use last names or try to reveal identities too terribly much. I don’t have issues about people knowing who I am, but others do. I try to respect their privacy as much as possible. I don’t believe in being anonymous and I don’t believe in keeping secrets. I try to provide as much detail as possible. I’m very verbose — you’ve been warned.
2007 About Page
I first started keeping my journal on-line in 1996 at the age of 24, before the word “blog” was ever coined. And by that logic, I’ve never “blogged” but journaled. Old-schoolers will back me up on this.
The first incarnation of The Lisa Chronicles started on a now-defunct Freenet in my hometown, moved to GeoCities, and found its first permanent home at simunye.org. Various minor moves to other domains that I procured over the years before its final resting place here at modgirl.net.
And in the last decade plus of journaling my life on-line, I’ve met amazing people from all over the world, fell in and out of love, found employment, ranted about the things I despised and raved about the things I loved. It’s been my cheap therapy, my way of expressing myself, of often much needed ego boost, and I have often been humbled by those I’ve met simply by their sheer amazing selves.
2011 About page
In no discerning order: 30 something. Punk rock librarian and archivist. Sassy. Waffle. Pug owner. World traveler. Pierced. Tattooed. Tall. Music and book lover. Discriminating Guinness taster. Aging, alternative hipster. Eco-conscious. Geek. Equally in love with James Bond and Jane Austen.
2014 About page
I’m Lisa.
I am from the Internet.
You may know me as @pnkrcklibrarian, or from my previous online journal, The Lisa Chronicles. If we’re going to go back even farther to the days of Undernet IRC, as simunye or lisha.
You may also know me to a lesser extent from LiveJournal, Goodreads, Tumblr, and Pinterest and things I have created.
“Fuck” is my favorite word and I also have a lot of opinions.
I used to want to write for Rolling Stone but have worked everywhere from meat packing plant to a newspaper salesperson to a network engineer and then a librarian with multitude of stops along the way. Now I write full time and wave my cane at the kids on my lawn.
x0x0,
Lisa
daily walk: the floating head tree
Dear Internet,
Last night I was utterly exhausted when I crawled into bed around midnight with the hope that by reading, I’d be able to nod off and get to sleep. My brain had other things on its mind because I finished the book around 1:30A, and still wide awake at 5:11AM watching Bob’s Burgers.
I took half a Klonopin around 4ish, which I think finally drove me the edge into wonderland of sleep. However, I bolted upright in bed at around 9:30AM as if I had slept for days.
TheHusband, who was appreciative of me being quiet as a mouse while I watched terrible television last night, tried to cajole to go back to sleep but I was BRIGHT EYED AND BUSHY TAILED. LIke a squirrel on speed.
I decided to harness this extra energy by walking to the Downtown Market for their Saturday Farmer’s Market since we needed an assortment of veg. The round trip is about a mile and would also count as part of my daily walk series, PLUS getting some kind of exercise should help with the mania.
Win-win all the way around.
As we walked to the market, I had forgotten the house with the floating heads was on our way, which marked the perfect beginning of the journey.
Because of some dilly-dallying on my end at home, we didn’t get to the market until after 12PM, so most of the fruit/veg were picked over but we still ended up scoring us some great finds. We were hoping to have lunch at Grampas’s Pasty Co., because goddamn their Conrish influenced pasties are delicious, but they were down to two flavors we weren’t rather fond of so we skipped them this week.
After loading up our messenger bags with our finds, we walked the Market’s inside hall to see if we were missing any else and to get lunch ideas. We ended up with a few treats from Sweetie-licious Bakery Cafe for later, but still no lunch options were tempting us. Since we’re right downtown, we decided to see what was open.
Stella’s is one of our favorite spots to eat in the downtown core. They have awesome burgers, great fries, and metric fuckton of old video games to play. But we weren’t in the mood for Stella’s so we kept walking and ended up at Meena’s Joint, which serves stoner food with a Rasta vibe.
TheHusband might looks like he partakes but we are aging alternative hipsters and coupled with the Coheed and Cambria on the stereo, we were definitely not the clientele they are catering to. The food is basically anything that could constitute a sandwich filling packed into a grilled tortilla and the taste was merely, “meh.”
With our bellies full, I was ready to keep on walking around downtown, maybe do a stroll through GRAM or a saunter down Monroe Center, but the threatening rain finally decided to open up the skies.
We decided to just walk home in rainy, companionable silence.
Distance: 3 miles
Walk time: 1:00:54 (This is total walk time, does not include time we shopped at the market or lunch)
Pace: 20:17/mile
xoxo,
Lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010
TheHusband came in and told me how much he appreciated me and is encouraging of my work. I am noting this as I am naturally suspicious.
Dear Internet,
In our household, neither TheHusband nor myself are one for blowing smoke up each other’s arses. Thus when he showed up in my office this morning to tell me how much he appreciates everything I do and asked how he could be more encouraging of my work, I was naturally suspicious.
TheHusband is a snugglesaurus par excellence, but expressing himself verbally is not his forte. Hence my suspicion when the outpouring comes because it is so unexpected that I am inclined to narrow my eyes a little and start probing him with questions.
When you think about it, I’m the one being the jerk here when he’s the one wearing his heart on his basketball shorts.
(And he is the only person alive who is allowed to call me “Pookie Bear” without irony or fear of losing an appendage.)
It has been documented we have a very complicated mating ritual.
««««»»»»
My brain is on fire. It is spinning so fast, I feel at any moment it is going to whiz out of my skull and splat against the wall.
Mania has beset me this week, which is why I’ve been negligent on the daily walks. When it gets to the point where I need to start taking Klonopin to bring me down to normal human speed, even a half dose in the middle of the day, on a near daily basis, productivity slows down to a crawl. If I take Klonopin more than a couple of days in a row, even if my head is buzzing a million miles an hour, I physically feel exhausted and barely able to function.
It becomes a delicate balance of what can I accomplish before needing to take the drugs so I can stop being in mental pain.
««««»»»»
This week was filled with Adult Responsibilities aka I had to wear pants and leave the house. I met with our new CPA on Wednesday and my lawyer on Thursday, both for the reason of completing a LLC on Pookie Bear Industries (not really the name though TheHusband was championing for it).
Why the LLC? Well, a couple of reasons with the main one being as that I’m in the process of lining up some freelance work, I need to be able to write off expenses related to the freelancing. I’m also planning on doing some self-publishing work that if I have a LLC, it will just look better professionally.
(There a metric fuck ton of homework that I need to do for both the CPA and the lawyer, so I’m trying to squeak that out when my head is not inflamed. Sometimes being an adult is hard.)
««««»»»»
I knew going into this I would not be writing every single day, at least not on a single project everyday, and I did know I needed to square out space for household activities to allow me to write uninterrupted. When I’m at home, I feel inclined to do all the domestic work needed and letting that overrun when I should be doing something related to this new adventure. But as I start to get a feel for my schedule and tackling much needed domestic things and Adult Responsibilities, it often comes to early evening before I even have that space to write. Coupled with the mania as of late, it’s all been a well managed chaos.
I will say I’m pretty pleased that even with how my brain is feeling, I set out a small goal todos every day and get those done without too much pain or stress. I’ve started documenting every single thing I’ve done for the day, no matter how minute, in DayOne so I can have better accountability and will making writing up my monthly summary easier.
Monday I’m heading up to Throbbing Cabin solo to work for a week without interruption. The goal is to get the bulk of the work I’ve outlined a few days ago started and in some sort of decent shape. This weekend will be spent doing work on the back end of the work. Without having a snugglesaurus TheHusband around or domesticity to tempt me out of my working lair, I will be able to buckle down and zone out in my worlds.
The kind of day I’m structuring will float something like this: Wake up, take a hike around the area (hence the daily walks will resume), get some writing done. Eat something. Get some more writing done. Eat some more. Do a bit of reading. Hang out at the beach with my telescope. Sleep.
If that does work, I am hoping to be travelling up to Throbbing Cabin as much as I can solo until the snows fall. And maybe, if TheHusband is very good, he can come visit.
xoxo,
Lisa
daily walk: Bear Paw Pizza
Dear Internet,
Our story begins last night when TheHusband and I decided to head up to Northport, a village 20 miles north of Throbbing Cabin in the tip of the peninsula accessible by the lovely twisty turny M22, where we went for dinner and to catch the Fourth of July fireworks.
Last year we showed up when the fireworks were beginning and parking was near impossible, so this year we thought we would be slick and go super early, get a good spot, have dinner, and wander around town before the show began at dusk.
Aren’t we a clever lot?
We arrived sometime after 6PM and found parking easily in the downtown area, which was a few blocks from the marina where the fireworks are held. People were already picnicking and saving spots four plus hours before the show was to begin, so you know this event is legit.
Dinner was pulled pork sammiches with sweet potato chips at the Garage Grill & Fuel Lot, which had all the makings of becoming a favorite of ours. I thought the pulled pork was heavy on the grease and less on the BBQ, while TheHusband raved about how great the pork was smoked. The sweet potato chips and coleslaw were divine, so I didn’t trouble myself much over the greasy BBQ.
All of this washed down with the nectar of the gods, Labatt Blue.
We walked around town for a bit after dinner, having a drink at Northport Brewing, before heading over camp our spots at the park for the night.
Sometime after we finished dinner, and around the time we got drinks, I started feeling not so hot. My period started that afternoon before we left, so I put the blame on it even though I kept feeling like I needed to throw up which was NOT a typical period accoutrement.
The rest of the night alternately crawled and sped on by while I struggled with brain issues, stomach issues, and period issues. Plus, the weather had turned decidedly cooler, dipping into the 50s before the evening was over.
Last night would be the second night in a row I would need to use a heating blanket. Pure Michigan, my arse.
TheHusband and I played Words with Friends during the wait for the boom show, but the battery life on my phone was draining insanely fast and when it hit 23%, immediately depleted itself to 0%. I managed to catch a vague sharp picture of floating lanterns being released into the sky but not a single image of the fireworks show.
The crowd was pulsing as the night wore on. Drunk soccer moms and their families camped in front of us and became surly when we declined the cupcake topper American flags they offered us in their half-hearted attempt of friendly patriotism.
Every once in a while a drunk voice would yell, “‘MURICA!” and the crowd would laugh. Everyone around us seemed to be having a good time while my mood became darker, my stomach was in agony, and the temperature continued to drop.
We could see the fireworks show from down the bay in Traverse City and across the bay over in the Eastport area, both of which began at around 10PM. Northport advertise “at dusk,” but actually start their show at 10:30PM and at 10:30PM on the dot, the show began. After 20 minutes of their half-hearted fireworks show, TheHusband gave in to my agony and suggested we leave to beat the crowd.
On the drive back, I kept muttering, “I feel like I’m going to throw up” and “I don’t feel good” and YET, nothing was forthcoming. I drowned some Pepto when we got home, took a Klonopin for my mood, and went to bed.
Three hours later, I up in bed out of a dead sleep. “I don’t feel good,” I said to myself as I made my way down to the bathroom.
Literally the moment I flipped on the bathroom light, the heaving started. I knelt and clutched the toilet as dinner, beer, and Pepto all came back up. The force of the constant heaving turned my throat raw and my stomach into pin cushion.
Once everything was out of my system, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and crawled back upstairs into bed. TheHusband rubbed my back while I fell back asleep, finally having relief in getting rid of the alien out of my stomach.
This morning was slow going.
I didn’t wake up until later, snuggling under TheHusband’s arms while he read Grantland or some other ESPN derivative on his tablet. Today we were going to go on a hike, then head to Traverse City for Cherry Festival and see Emili. None of those things happened. Instead, after a brunch of toast and OJ, we got dressed to run errands – like picking up a ladder and buying tampons. (The bloodwolves are devourous creatures.)
We crisscrossed Home Depot so many times, we actually got a mile in which means — hurray! Walk for the day completed.
Dinner was depending on if my stomach felt better (pizza) or not (burgers on the grill). I figured since my stomach was already all fucked up from whatever the fuck it is I ate the day before, eating cheese was going to be fair less painful.
I had been bragging to TheHusband for the last few years that when I used to come up to this area with TheEx, we would get pizza from Bear Paw and it was the best pizza I ever had.
Distance: A mile round trip through Home Depot
Walk time: N/A
Pace: N/A
Apparently my memories of the pizza are rose colored memories because once that first slice hit my mouth, I had to concede it wasn’t that great. I tentatively ate a few slices while we discussed the merits of good vs bad pizza. After dinner, we declared to the other now that dinner was complete, we would relax for a bit before doing some long overdue DIY around the cabin and putting our telescope together to take to the beach later in the evening.
Five hours later, I’m still on the chaise writing. TheHusband is still in his chair reading and we’ve been listening to a mix of Calypso, Mambo, and ’60s protest music while we did our individual things.
Fuck it. It’s vacation time. The gutters can wait another day to be cleaned; the hammock will get hung at some point. The stars will still be there tomorrow for our gaze.
xoxo,
Lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in:
daily walk: Pyramid Point
Dear Internet,
Today’s walk was actually a hike through one of our favorite areas: Pyramid Point. Last year when we did this hike, we meandered off the main trail and ended up more than 2 miles further from the trailhead than we were supposed to be and the 2.7 mile hike turned into 5 miles.
Then, after we figured out our location and were walking towards our car, I managed to have a massive anxiety attack and shut myself down. TheHusband jogged back to the car on his lonesome to come back and pick me up since it was clear I was refusing to not move an inch. After he had been gone for what felt like years, I somehow got myself pulled together and trudged forward, meeting him 1/10th of a mile from our where our car was parked.
Good times!
Now that I know the area better, and I’ve been steadily walking around the neighborhood these last few weeks, I felt much more confident going into the hike.
Plus it’s hard to not feel awesome when wearing a pair of sassy orthopedic socks.
Beginning of the trailhead.
After walking about about a half a mile to the split, you could either continue climbing up and to the lookout to view Lake Michigan or continue on the trail into the woods. The lookout is densely packed and with the large number of people hanging out today, we decided to go right into the woods.
If you did choose to up to the lookout, you can hike around the bluffs and come back down via this sand slide to the trail as an alternate route. TheHusband wants to get in shape enough to come up this route instead of the trail in the beginning since it will be less populated. I laughed in his general direction.
TheHusband is contemplating a tree that had half of its trunk neatly cut off by lightning.
There are loads of fallen trees over the trails and I love them. I feel like I’m hanging out in Middle Earth and these are seating for giants.
There is a side loop you can take through meadows, where last year I kept saying, “The Orcs are chasing us — run!” as we hiked. Why? Because Old Age Pensioners (or Orcs as I like to call them) were catching up with us and having the elderly more fit than you is embarrassing.
Anywho, that loop brings you back to this point, and this is where we fucked up. We started out taking the meadows and took a wrong turn somewhere and this is how we ended up 2 miles further than we were supposed to be. This year, we said fuck the meadows and just continued on the trail in the woods. Much safer that way. Plus — no Orcs!
Distance: 2ish miles (round trip)
Walk time: 40ish minutes
Pace: 26:32/mile
I forgot to turn the Fitbit on until after we had started the hike and there were also some hiccups, so the times is sorta of close? During bits of the hike itself, Fitbit kept crashing as evidence by the lack of red line connecting the beginning and the rest of the hike and I realised you could also “lock” the timer into place so if you navigated away from the screen, it wouldn’t put itself on pause.
Tomorrow TheHusband has found us another hike. Good times will be had whether we like them or not.
xoxo
Lisa
